but when his heart was touched, I found him to be one of the most amiable nondescripts of humanity, and his wife was as kind as himself; she could not talk English, but she spent a busy hour in preparing for the Saxon her own daughter's bed; the girl having just departed for Liverpool, where she was a nursemaid. The connection between this Welsh island and Liverpool is of portentous result to the good people of Anglesey. The body of Wales is less near to them in many respects. By the steamers which ply to Beaumaris the Liverpool newspapers are brought and disseminated through the parishes, and the advertisements therein beget inevitable hopes and longings in many a placid farm-house which has conquered less insidious temptations towards a change of circumstances. The young men are drawn away from their healthy life at home to serve as potmen or billiard markers in the big town; and, worse still, every parish is decimated of its maidens, who cannot resist the prospects and allurements of a life of comparative excitement. The latter go as domestic servants. Sometimes they come home again, bettered in every way. Often they forget their native island; or, at least, let it slip from their memory in the midst of their engrossing labours. And often, too, they die young in Liverpool, or return to die; the town has written its mark upon them. Hence, in going from churchyard to churchyard in Anglesey, one sees a remarkable number of unpretentious blue slate tombstones, commemorating girls and young women, between seventeen and twenty-five. In many instances, "died at Liverpool" tells it own tale. At other times, one may infer that Liverpool has had a hand in their early death. This fact was forced home upon me one day, when I was trudging across the sands of Newborough, in the south-west of the island. I came to a lonely farmhouse, with a few cowering shrubs on the seaward side of it. Two carts were outside the premises, and within, on a circular piece of turf, fronting the house, seven or eight men were uncording a white-wood packing case, as it seemed. At first, I did not notice that the blinds of the house were drawn, nor that an old man and woman were standing by the door, watching the men at work, and now and again wiping their eyes. Well, the case was unbound, and the nails extracted; and then was disclosed a coffin. The old farm-people had let their grand daughter go to Liverpool to seek her fortune like the rest; and now they were going to bury her in her own land. "She was only nineteen, and a sweet creature," said my informant. But it is time to end this paper. Perhaps my few observations may help to remind the traveller, en route for Dublin, that Holyhead is something more than a landing-stage, and that Anglesey, besides giving superb prospects of Snowdon, at little cost of one's legs, affords agreeable pastime for anyone who likes uncommon peregrinations. Old Rowlands makes a cheerful little vaunt about the consequence of the larger island; which vaunt may still apply in its credit, though the days of "divine right" are gone for ever. Queen Anne, he says, was Sovereign of Scotland, through Walter Steward, who was born at Aberffraw (in Anglesey); of Wales, through the heirs of Prince Llewellyn, also born and bred at Aberffraw; and of England, through Owen Tudor. What was good for Queen Anne is good for the House of Hanover, also. Again, that famous traveller, Madoc ap Owen Gwynedd, who sailed to the West, and had inklings of the New World, three centuries before Columbus, was also born in Anglesey. Thus, without considering its innumerable bards, this neglected island of Great Britain is of some repute in the world's history. AN INVALID'S GRIEVANCE. EVERY man has a grievance. I have mine, and it is a sore one. It is against novelists. I have one or two others of a minor order against that same race; but my chief grievance is the infamous conspiracy they have entered into to misrepresent and to injure invalids of all sorts and kinds. It is no use appealing to their sense of honour or truth, or pointing them to the beauty of realism; they only smile, and, muttering something about delicacy of sentiment, pursue their course. What is the result? Take up one of their books, and you are gravely assured that beauty, talent, goods, nay, every gift desired by man, varies in inverse proportion to health. Their heroines-for I must confess that this species of fetishism is generally reserved for ladies, though, from time to time, men come in for their sharebecome more and more beautiful, amiable, and unselfish as their strength fades away. The little frailties inherent in them as eyes-being associated with decay, can surely never appeal to a healthy sense of the beautiful. Then my natural amiability is to be miraculously increased; though why, in the name of common sense, I should be more amiable at the very moment my nerve is unhinged, my head heavy, and my frame racked with pain or wearied with weakness, than when the blood is coursing human beings gradually disappear; their minds, no matter how dull in the days of their strength, in weakness become transcendent in penetration and judgement; whilst their moral natures shine with a radiance only explicable upon the supposition that the glory of another world is casting its halo around them. They bear their own sufferings with patience, and are always ready to lend an ear of sympathy to their friends; their cheerfulness is pro-actively through my veins and my whole verbial; whilst their tact and kindliness brighten the lives of those who have the happiness of being brought into contact with them. Such are the invalids of fiction. Now, novelists have taught us that this is what human nature develops into when brought under the elevating influence of ill-health. There is something very pretty and taking in the fancy, and, so long as you are strong and well yourself, no doubt you cordially support the novelist's theory. Nay, more, if your friend, when illness comes upon him, fail to act up to it, you immediately begin to suspect that there must be some thing wrong in him; that you have been mistaken in your conception of his character; and straightway you shut up the font of your sympathy, and pass by on the other side. And all because the poor man has failed to conform to a fanciful ideal which novelists have set up as the standard, which ideal is fundamentally false and unnatural, and yet for the sake of it you sacrifice your dearest friend. being is thrilling with a sense of vigour and happiness, it is difficult to say. Just when my attention must, by the very force of my sufferings, be fixed upon myself, I am required to exhibit an unusual amount of unselfishness. I am in an agony, and yet I must sympathise with my friend because he has a corn! I have not had a night's sleep for weeks, but I must be tenderly sorry that his brute of a dog has kept him awake for an hour! And, knowing that I may never see another spring, I am called upon to help him to decide what would be the pleasantest thing to do just when the leaves are bursting into bloom; to sketch a walking tour; to think where he will get the best fishing. Why, the very thought is monstrous ! But perhaps the cruellest rub of all is that intellectually also I am expected to improve. No doubt a whole day spent in wondering whether that confounded pain will ever cease its gnawing will have a marvellous effect in brightening my intellect and rendering my penetration more acute, my arguments more convincing. Now, was ever anything more manifestly unjust? Why should I, who, in my strong- All this I am required to do under est, happiest days, was no better than my penalty of being regarded as a monster fellows, be suddenly called upon to develop entirely beyond the pale of humanity! all sorts of transcendent virtues because, That is, I must outrage every instinct of forsooth, I have lost that which made life my nature, dye my soul with the deepest most precious? I am to become more hypocrisy, and why? Because my friends, beautiful! How can ill-health bring incited by the novelists, have chosen to beauty? Can it make a retroussé nose prostrate themselves in worship before an more aquiline, or little colourless eyes large ideal invalid. In our heart of hearts, and brilliant? No matter how perfect the we all know- at least most of us do, contour, who prefers a sharp jaw-bone to a for the miraculous power some people well-rounded cheek, a trembling, tottering possess of casting a glamour over falsegait to the easy, supple movements of the hood is one of the mysteries of the strong? nineteenth century that ill-health, far Yes, you may reply, but consider the from having any elevating effect, demoradelicate beauty that accompanies consump-lises, in every sense of the word, those tion. Some roses, as they are fading, for a few hours assume an unequalled brilliancy of hue; but, as it is the brilliancy of decay, it is repulsive. In the same way the bloom of disease-even in the few cases in which it has any bloom, though it more frequently brings with it haggard cheeks and heavy who are brought under its influence. There is suffering a man may be called upon to endure which does ennoble him; but it is not so with physical suffering; for this, by fixing his thought and attention upon himself, slowly but surely undermines his power of fixing it upon anything else. Also by weakening his body it weakens his will power, and surely will-power is the very mainspring of moral worth. How can a man help being unreasonable and irritable when his nerves are unstrung and quivering with pain? He may be a giant in resolution; but if his health fail him, no matter how great be his talents, his work will be defective. He may write a biting satire, a short burst of eloquence; but as for any long-sustained effort--why, the idea is absurd! Could anyone read the works of Shakespeare or of Goethe and doubt that these men were sound in body as in mind? On the other hand, does not one feel at every turn whilst reading Schiller, or Pope, that these, with all their talents, were warped and imperfect because their bodies were not equal to their minds ? If this be so with the great ones of the earth, how much more so with ordinary men and women? How can they be expected to fight against the burden of an aching body Mind, I do not deny that some do fight against it, and even gain a seeming victory; from time to time we come across those beings who, in the midst of their sufferings, smile down upon those around them, and talk sweetly of the "Mystery of Pain"; but what is the price they pay for having reached this height Loss of all touch with humanity; they are no longer men and brethren, but something beyond -above if you will-the ken of poor weak mortals. It was such as they who, in the olden days, walked with a smile to the stake, worthy, no doubt, of all admiration; but as for love or fellowship-could one love Cleopatra's Needle? Then, too, a taste for martyrdom is not given to every man. But with such as these I have nothing to do; they are but the exception, and it is for poor ordinary men and women that I am pleading, and I maintain that these, if called upon to undergo a lengthened period of ill-health, almost invariably deteriorate in moral fibre, their tempers become irritable or morose, their minds dull, and their whole natures selfish. If anyone doubts this, let him appeal to the experience of a professional nurse, and some curious facts will be unfolded to him. But what I assert is so perfectly natural that the only unnatural thing in the whole affair is that any should imagine it could be otherwise. Surely, then, it would be more kindly, both to the invalid and his friends, to face the truth boldly, for the both, though I confess it is the former who receives my sympathy- he is so perfectly helpless. He is called upon to bear suffering; and, instead of being allowed to choose the way which might be to him, personally, the easiest, he must bear it in an unnatural and absurd fashion, in accordance with the decree of society. He knows only too well what is expected of him; and how woeful are his shortcomings ! He is haunted by the fear that "Tekel" is being pronounced over him. Sometimes this dread spurs him on to make superhuman efforts to hide his weakness; but the flesh is weak, and he only sinks back a thousandfold worse for his temporary elevation. And then the friends of the sufferer. No doubt it is very painful to see one whom they really care for, lamentably falling short of the ideal they had fixed for him; but, in fairness, they should remember that it was they, not he, who fixed the ideal. Is he to be blamed, because they had so little power of judging of his character? Of course it is a compliment to one's friend to conceive that he is so very much nobler and better than we ourselves are; still it is rather hard to punish him for not exhibiting all the good qualities with which our fancy had chosen to endow him; and still worse to feel hurt and offended at his failure. Is it kind to set a man on a pedestal from which we know he will cer tainly fall? Surely it would be much more comfortable to keep him on level ground, and, taking it for granted that he is in a state of moral as well as physical weakness, look on his shortcomings with a lenient eye! According to Homer, the Greeks, when any misfortune came upon them, indulged to the full their right of weeping and wailing; nor did they scruple, from time to time, to hurl strong language at the gods who afflicted them. It never occurred to them that suffering was to be borne in silence, nay, more with a smiling face. Why should we not imitate them, and take the ills that come upon us naturally, humanly? Before this can be done, we must drag down the false ideal which has been set up; and this requires common-sense, a rare virtue in this our day. MONTHEROND. AN OUT OF-THE WAY STORY. Two roads, winding downwards through present system of deception presses on the Jorat forest-land, meet in an open hollow. One of these roads comes suddenly round a big boulder of rock, and wends its way, for a hundred yards or so, along a ledge overhanging a hasty, brawling mountain stream; the other emerges from the heavy green shadow of the pinewood, and, passing over the stream on a high, single-arched bridge, joins company with the first, and disappears behind another buttress of granite. The brook disappears, too, with bustling eagerness, as if it must at all risks keep the road in sight, and find its way out of the forest solitude into the busy world. Small blame to it either; for when a mountain_brook is bearing its refreshing tribute to the great Rhine stream, and to the broad, fair sea, why should it loiter in such a quiet, unsophisticated forest corner as Montherond? At the meeting of the roads, well overshadowed by the solemn, dark trees, is a little group of buildings-an ancient church, and a massive, many-gabled inn, which was long ago a monastery, stand side by side, and, at a stone-throw's distance, just where the stream hurries into view, a tiny sawmill. Besides these, there is a large, barnlike structure opposite to the inn, where the forest-folk meet to dance on high days and holidays; and between the church and the stream a plot of grass, in which, when they are old and weary, they can lie down to forget and to be forgotten, almost passed out of the recollection of his neighbours. When his day's work was over, and the water was running idly through the mill, he used to go and lounge over the churchyard wall, and think, with a kind of morbid satisfaction, how some summer evening the moths would be hovering in the dying light among the wild flowers which grew out of his own grave, as he saw them hover over the many mounds which crowded the little burial-ground. He would soon, he knew, be forgotten once he was laid there; but that did not trouble him at all, because there was no one by whom he desired to be remembered, unless, perhaps, he hoped that Verena Blanc, the maid-servant at the inn, would sometimes give him a passing thought when her grey eyes should rest for a moment on the spot where he lay. Twenty years ago, when François Thalamy had been a young man in the thirties, there had been another Verena Blanc, the daughter of the half-witted charcoal-burner who lived at La Croisette, an hour's walk from Montherond. She was young and beautiful, with large, soft, grey eyes, and round, peach-bloom cheeks. All the lads who came to dine at Montherond were jealous of Verena's smiles and favours; but François Thalamy was the most jealous of all. He had gone through life insensible to the charms of any girl, until the day he saw Verena; and, when he had once fixed his affections and hopes on her, it was a mortal pang to him if he saw her look kindly at any other man. He might as well have resigned himself to his fate from the first, for Verena overlooked his adoration, and gave him no encouragement. His thirtyfive years seemed, from her standpoint of eighteen, like uninteresting middle age. She certainly singled out none of her other admirers, but danced and flirted with them As long as the forest-folk, who fill the church on Sundays, or dance in the shed on festivals, can remember, the inn of Montherond had been kept by generation after generation of Cruchons, and the sawmill of Montherond had been worked by a succession of Thalamys. Old Pierre Cruchon, the host of Montherond, was living in hopes of handing on the dignity of his position to his son Pierre, the farmer at La Criblerie, who, in his turn, would transmit his expectations of heir-apparent to his own stalwart son called by way of distinc-impartially. That, however, was very little tion, Pierre Maurice. But with Thalamy at the saw-mill it was different. He had been the only son of his parents, and had never married. He had, indeed, passed the age for courtship and marriage, and, at his death, a distant cousin would come to take his place, and would bring a new name and new notions to break in on the long-established order of things. Not that François Thalamy grieved over this contingency. He had taken his dose of troubles early in life, and all his subsequent loneliness and sufferings were but the corollary of something which had consolation to Thalamy, when his heart was bursting with love for her. Matters grew worse as time went on. One spring Sunday there came some students from Lausanne for a holiday in the forest. They dined at Montherond and danced in the thatched ball-room afterwards. After that Verena did not smile on all her admirers alike, nor distribute her dances any longer with impartiality. She kept them, as nearly as possible, for one of the students, whom his companions called Réné, and who came back to Montherond, Sunday after Sunday, all through the sum mer, till, in a reckless student fashion, he had run up quite a long bill at Cruchon's for dinners, and beer, and wine, and other things, which he could enjoy far better than he could pay for. By-and-by the neighbours began to wonder how old Blanc could be so foolish as to let his motherless girl have so much liberty; then the wonder grew to headshakings, and more than one well-intentioned busybody tried to open the charcoal burner's eyes to something which was clear to everyone else. The old man was slow to believe what had happened to his bright-eyed child, and, when he did understand, his feeble indignation did not seem to have any effect on Monsieur Réné, who, besides his passion for enjoyment, seemed to have only one other compelling power for his actions, namely a great dread of his delinquencies reaching the ears of his father. Verena always defended her lover, declaring that he had promised to make her his wife as soon as he could screw bis courage up to the necessary conflict with his father. At last, it was arranged that he should go home to Yverdon for a few days to plead their cause; and he bound him self to bring back a favourable answer the following Sunday. However, whether he went or not, or, if he went, how his mission sped, Verena never knew. The Sunday was long remembered afterwards for a terrible storm which raged through the forest; it would have been unreasonable to expect Monsieur Réné to walk over from Lausanne in such weather; so poor Verena made the best of her disappointment for that time. After the storm the summer came back, and she went day after day to the bridge to watch for his coming down the hill along the short vista of dark pines. But he never came; and when the snow lay all over the woodland, little Verena was born in shame and misery, and a patch was cleared in the churchyard to dig a resting-place for her broken-hearted mother. of spoiling Verena by over-indulgence; the child had very little kindness shown her at the inn, but she had plenty of rough work, and plenty of hard words seasoned with a fair share of blows, all of which did not prevent her growing up graceful and lissome, nor take the light out of her grey eyes, nor the ripe fulness from her rosy lips, nor the bloom from her rounded cheek. In fact, though Verena Blanc was only the granddaughter of the poor imbecile charcoal burner, only the nameless child of dishonoured parents, she was far and away the belle of the forest hamlets, and chiefest and best favoured on her long list of admirers was her mistress's grandson, Pierre Maurice Cruchon, the heir-apparent of the farm of La Criblerie and the inn of Montherond. François Taalamy, too, had carried on his hopeless passion for the mother in a doting fondness for the daughter; but that could scarcely be said to count for anything, except when Madame Cruchon or her daughter-in-law was cross, and then Thalamy's infatuation was as good a peg as any other on which to hang a reproach. It must be owned that Verena did not generally take the reproaches much to heart. When one is young, and when one feels that life may have plenty of good things in store, one can put up with hard work and hard words for the time being. It was the Feast of Pentecost. The pinetrees had put bright green rosettes on the ends of their sombre branches; the mountain brook that turned Thalamy's saw-mill was singing its gayest summer song; the birds were decked out in their courting plumage; the wild strawberry-blossoms gleamed in the grassy glades; and the quiet forest roads were alive with the groups of people on their way to church. There were more people than usual, partly in honour of the great festival, and partly out of curiosity, to hear the sermon of the strange pastor, who was coming from the other side of the lake to preach at Montherond. Old Madame Cruchon and Verena had been very busy, preparing for all the guests who were expected at the inn. The tables were laid in the great room, whose four windows looked out on to the graveyard; the largest barrel of beer was tapped; the red and white wine had been laid ready, and the cookery had been advanced as far as possible on such an occasion. Madame Cruchon, junior, a fine buxom woman of five-and-forty, had come down from La Criblerie, to help. She was dressed, as |